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Android Runtime for BlackBerry roadmap updated, plenty of new features arriving soon

If you've been following the @BlackBerryDev Twitter account then you know they've been rolling out new stuff for developers on pretty much on a daily basis. The developer flightboard has been updated once again and now has the upcoming Android Runtime for BlackBerry API's listed. Developers building or porting Android apps will have the following features available to them this month:

  • Contacts Support - Contact information can be added to a new and existing contact via the native BlackBerry 10 contacts application.
  • Dial & SMS Support - Phone numbers that are selected within an Android application will launch the phone dialer. Intent support to compose and send SMS text messages.
  • IMF Support - Android text input controls are now integrated with the BlackBerry 10 virtual keyboard. This makes it possible to enable keyboard features such as text prediction, dedicated numerical input, etc.
  • Multimedia Sync - Multimedia created via Android applications now will be visible to native BlackBerry 10 multimedia applications. This includes pictures, videos etc.
  • Notifications - Provide notifications for your application. These can be made visibile in the integrated BlackBerry 10 notification box, or a splat on your application icon.
  • Eclipse Plug-In 3.1 - Added support for Eclipse 3.8 Juno, plus additional bug fixes. Full release notes

Some of that stuff works 'kind of' right now but when the A3 Beta version rolls out, it'll be better supported. In addition to updating the Android Runtime info, RIM has also gone ahead and updated some of their Native SDK Sample apps as well.

Learn more about the Android Runtime for BlackBerry

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